Peace talks at preliminary stage, FNL official says

Peace talks between the government of Burundi and the country's remaining rebel group, the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), which began on 29 May in Tanzania, are still at an informal stage, an official of the rebel movement said on Wednesday. "We are still deliberating on preliminary issues and [plan to] come up with a framework for formal talks," the official, who requested anonymity, said in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial city, venue of the talks. He described the discussions held so far as "informal consultations". The South African government is facilitating the talks, under the auspices of a forum established by heads of state of the Great Lakes, known as the Regional Initiative on Burundi. Uganda chairs the forum. The talks are aimed at bringing the FNL into the government in Burundi, a country emerging from 12 years of civil war in which at least 300,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands others displaced. When the talks opened on 29 May, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete told the delegates: "Today is the opportunity for us to effect a new, hopeful and inclusive political dispensation in Burundi. Battles leave social, psychological and political scars among the belligerents as well as innocent bystanders, but every war must end." Civil war erupted in Burundi in 1993 following the assassination of the country's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was from the ethnic Hutu majority. Paratroopers of the then-minority, Tutsi-dominated army allegedly killed Ndadaye. Since then, the civil war pitted the mainly Tutsi army against several Hutu rebel groups. Fighting continued between the army and the FNL even after a transitional phase ended in August 2005 with the election of President Pierre Nkurunziza, who previously led the main Hutu rebel movement, the Conseil national pour la défense de la democratie-Forces pour la défense de la democratie, which has since become a political party.